I've had partial success getting images from my Amcrest IP3M-956E as a generic camera. If you are looking to set triggers on motion detection and such, then a plugin will have to be written. Old Foscams (non-HD versions) were able to send HTTP requests on a motion event, and thus you could have used something like the virtual motion sensor plugin (or the old Foscam plugin itself) to generate triggers within Vera.

Newer cameras seem to lack this functionality, (perhaps to push people to the manufacturers' cloud storage service). I'm looking at the Amcrest CGI, and it might be possible to use one of its commands to generate events in Vera. I'll be playing with it over the next few weeks to see if I can get something going.

I've had partial success getting images from my Amcrest IP3M-956E as a generic camera. If you are looking to set triggers on motion detection and such, then a plugin will have to be written. Old Foscams (non-HD versions) were able to send HTTP requests on a motion event, and thus you could have used something like the virtual motion sensor plugin (or the old Foscam plugin itself) to generate triggers within Vera.

Newer cameras seem to lack this functionality, (perhaps to push people to the manufacturers' cloud storage service). I'm looking at the Amcrest CGI, and it might be possible to use one of its commands to generate events in Vera. I'll be playing with it over the next few weeks to see if I can get something going.

Something to think about. I use Blue Iris for managing my cameras... it's far more powerful than trying to use Vera as a PVR. There is a great BI plugin that also include motion sensor capability for whatever camera you have in BI... I use it to switch all my tablets to a front door camera view when it detects motion. Otherwise, I use the BI apps for camera views most of the time.

I am looking more for a "if camera detects movement, turn the light on" action. If possible at all.The camera will be saving to my FTP server, so no need for PVR. Just trying to take advantage of the motion sensor on camera.

So far, it seems the two will have to be on their own:- Manage and record the camera on its own - get a motion detection monitor supported by Vera, as well as bulbs.

I'm hoping to try and replicate what you did. The documentation isn't clear if the command is a poll or sets up an unsolicited event. My camera is remote, so there are only limited tests i can run on it.

I played with it for a bit, and I couldn't get much out of it either. Without spending a ton of time investigating, it's hard to imagine what is going on. My only guess is that perhaps, a long timeout is needed for the http response (i.e. keep the connection open), so WHEN an event happens, the response is received.

But I contacted Vera support and was told:"The most important feature for a camera to work with the Vera unit, is to support the MJPEG Protocol and also to be able to have a URL method for obtaining a snapshot or JPG image."

And the camera does have that with the following commands:These two worked:

I have a DS2CD-2032F-I that I've been playing with. I haven't integrated it to Vera yet, but what the support person told you is mostly correct. The way the baseline Vera works is to grab static jpeg images for display purposes. So the snapshot.cgi url is the one to use. I believe front-ends like altUI support direct streaming. For inside my house, I don't use vera to see what is going on my cameras -- I use an android app (ipcam viewer pro). I do use vera remotely for occasional monitors.

All that being said, if what you're ultimately trying to do is to trigger a scene on motion, you don't really need to even display the images or video from the camera through vera. What you need (and what I am trying to also do) is to send a MESSAGE from the camera to Vera when it detects motion. That's the hard part -- you can always do what another user suggested on this thread and just use BlueIris. For my application, I don't want to spin up a computer just to run that software, but that's probably the EASIEST thing to do.

As for the Hikvision -- I'll try seeing if I can get images to show up on Vera. The key thing I am trying to figure out now is to figure out how to form a http request from the Hikvision per section 8.11.31 of their API.

I attached implementation file for Amcrest HD cameras that enables Pan/Tilt/Preset control support in Vera

I tested it on my IP2M-841B-UK ProHD on Vera EdgeZoom is untested as I don't see the Zoom controls in UI7 but I still enabled the actions in LUA code and ZoomWIde & ZoomTele URLs seems to work from a browser.